A Fundraiser for a Canadian Children's Library in Ethiopia

FAQs for Library Planters / Ethiopia Reads

Here is a recent email that I received from Jane Kurtz…lots of wonderful things going on and lots of wonderful things still to do!

In the hustle-bustle holiday season, my 2012 wish is that you will feel cheered through the coming year with the joyful and transformative things happening in the libraries planted for Ethiopian children by Ethiopia Reads. What, besides education, can turn poverty around in one generation? Education did it for my family and maybe yours. In the crowded dangerous streets of neighborhoods like the mercato in Addis Ababa, children often come to places like the Old Sarum School nibbled by sickness, hunger, lice—and within weeks…

…they have their childhoods back.

I don’t live in Ethiopia and most of you don’t live in Ethiopia. So you probably have questions…as I do. (My family raised money to collaboratively fund a library in honor of our reading mom who did live in Ethiopia for 23 years, but when my brother has taken teachers to Ethiopia in the summer for the past few years, he’s been too busy to visit it.) Luckily for us, our current country rep, Dana Roskey, founder of the Tesfa Foundation, did live in Ethiopia most of 2011 and has worked—as one visitor told me—all day seven days a week on those libraries and other literacy projects. He’s taken time to provide some information I hope will be helpful and encouraging for all of you.

When you say “plant” a library, what do you mean?

We’ve used a great sustainability model for most of the 50+ libraries, we’ve planted. A school provides a room and a person to run the library. Donors like you provide the funds to build furniture, ship books from the US and buy locally available (usually local language) books, cover basic training.

The word “plant” is apt because it’s a little like sticking a plant in the ground and trusting it will grow. This soil isn’t always robust, though, in that the library adults didn’t grow up with a library or books and may well not speak English (even though many of the books are in English because children have to learn to read in English to continue education past about 3rd grade). As you’ll see below, our focus now includes let’s-add-nutrients-to-the-soil commitment.

When you say “most,” what about the other libraries?

In a few special cases, we’ve created libraries that we’ve staffed and run ourselves. Shola Library was one—but we couldn’t sustain it because of rapidly rising rent costs. We have so far been able to maintain the Awassa Reading Center, though rent and staff costs are a tough issue there, too. In 2012, thanks to a donor, we’ll create a new community library that will operate from Old Sarum School in the mercato. Thanks to another donor, we’ll create a new community library in Dukum, near Addis Ababa. We’ll also re-create the donkey mobile libraries to be more mobile and reach children in more remote areas. We’ll study these models and spread what works.

Are all Ethiopia Reads libraries in Addis Ababa?

Nope. Most are. But we’ve had a multi-year commitment in and around Awassa. We tried a pilot projects with Peace Corps volunteers in 3 different locations in 2011. Now, thanks to a collaboration with the Textbook Learning Materials Project of USAID and the Ethiopia Ministry of Education, we’ve had an opportunity to plant a library in one selected school in each region of Ethiopia. I have a powerful feeling all 11 will be planted by this time next year.

Given that your staff is very small, how do you balance planting new libraries with strengthening existing ones?

This has been a hard question for Ethiopia Reads. In 2012, time and money will be devoted to encouraging literacy activities in the libraries—because our assessments in 2010 and 2011 showed that those fledging plants can take some blows: crowded schools, curriculum geared toward high stakes testing, inexperienced library managers, and little educator experience with either literacy or student-centered teaching.

Books change lives…but not if they sit on the shelves. (At least ours aren’t locked away, a common outcome for many NGO projects around the world, alas.)

Here’s how Dana describes what’s going on.

Librarian discussion group:

The group has met twice, always at the end of the month. The attendance has been right around 20 schools, 40 participants. The group has some good momentum, with steady attendance, enthusiasm, and participation. They have collaborated with facilitators in coming up with topics. Facilitators have been good about adding variety to format, in line with our general policy to introduce innovation and variety into our programming – book events, book clubs, trainings, etc. This has been received very well by all groups. The library discussion group has been a place to discuss and evaluate book events and book clubs progress.

Sample topics:

Library usage by the community

How a library manager can promote reading culture with in the school community

Using volunteers (coordinating with book clubs)

Library clustering / experience and resource sharing

Library manager training: The whole staff has worked together to create a three-day training that introduces innovation and variety in presentation and topics, trying to model good teaching methodology in our own work. (In other words, we emphasize interaction, integrate discussion, role play, and demonstrate strategies for promoting a love of reading, alongside the fundamentals of school and community library organization.) This is a priority in our work this year, and it has been received very well. The feedback summed up might be, ‘We usually dread trainings, but have really valued yours. Looking forward to more!’

Topics will include:

Organizing a library for children

Promoting a love of reading

Book repair and upkeep

Integrating programming with teachers

Ongoing assessment

In honoring another priority this year, trainings are part of our assessment system – learning about what goes on in our libraries; what the challenges and successes are; what the needs are; all informing our strategy for supporting them.

The coming month will mark the launch of our observation and assessment campaign, which will provide us with more first-hand data about the operations of our school libraries. Staff will plan for extended shifts inside all libraries, offering themselves as volunteers to work beside librarians for half a day. Their objective will be to fill out an assessment form – a protocol being developed and refined – that charts librarian tasks performed, interaction with students, student shifts, student preferences in reading, atmosphere in the library, teacher involvement, anecdotal observations, all toward painting a picture of the day-to-day possibilities and challenges in the libraries. It will take time to get a full picture. Complete data will require repeated visits, and will require data from many libraries, including our southern and rural libraries. But I believe this will yield information invaluable to future planning and training. And it will contribute to making Ethiopia Reads a resource for expertise about library and literacy, something sorely needed in Ethiopia.

Book Clubs:

At our orientation for all our Addis Ababa school library managers (with teachers and some school directors), we presented a plan to pilot book clubs among our network. We suggested that we implement first among a third of the represented schools this year, a second third next year, and aim for full implementation in the third year. We asked for volunteers, and were happy to see that we had more than eight volunteers. The point of implementing in stages is so that staff can successfully supervise / participate in the work, and so that each year we can test formats and activities that we can publish in a book club manual at the end of each year. By the third round, we will have a fairly solid model to pass on to new schools, and one that hopefully can be replicated on a larger scale. We’ll also have a small cadre of library managers with lots of experience, and who have advised and guided subsequent generations of implementation.

Representative library managers meet at least once a month with Ethiopia Reads staff for planning. Assignments for the first two months have been to form an organizational model for the club, and to begin testing some activities ideas among the students. The managers have been very enthusiastic, and have been coming up with lots of creative activity ideas themselves and sharing them. This week, upon the suggestion of the Belay Zeleke library manager, student volunteers in six of our book club schools will be handing our library cards as a promotion to use the library and read.

Other examples of activities:

At Belay Zeleke, the kids pick a book by a famous author, and they read aloud for a few minutes every in the flag ceremony.

At Tsehay Chora, a language teacher and the librarian oversee while volunteers from grades 5-8 read to early grade children during free periods.

Addis Tesfa has established a School Library Day on December 29.

Book Events:

We have staged 13 book events in Addis schools – and all four core staff members are trained to lead events (two lead at a time). The purpose of book events has always been twofold: (1) to establish a strong Ethiopia Reads presence among our schools libraries, encourage good relations, encourage school staff to see us as allies, promote a good image in the community, and (2) to encourage reading among children particularly at early grade levels, while demonstrating good practice in teaching reading to teachers and librarians. I will now add a third objective, which is to contribute to our assessment efforts – getting to know teachers, students, and librarians. We’ll add simple assessment to the program, such as collecting a few age-appropriate books from the school library and polling the class on who has read them (then reading from those books, encouraging them to go the library) and polling the class on their favorite books and stories to gauge how widely read they are.

Book event programs usually consist of reading a book / story, then leading the class in discussion and games – predicting where the story goes, acting out the characters, drawing, quizzing on vocabulary, reading to music, making up similar stories, creating their own books, and so on.

Can I be involved in making the library I planted better?

Of course! The most common need to come out of assessment is replacement and expansion of the collection of local language books. For each library, we are starting a $500 Love a Library fund for this purpose. As assessment and relationship-building continue, more can be done, too.

If you want to contribute to program general, visit http://www.ethiopiareads.org Buy a book. Buy some coffee. Buy a gift card for someone. Be a monthly donor.

My library is not in Addis Ababa. Is that a challenge?

Definitely. We have five professional Ethiopians running Ethiopia Reads + Dana Roskey coordinating and communicating with the US volunteers. Every step those six people make was funded by someone just like you, as was the office they sit in, the phone they make a call on, the public transportation ride to the school they visit (whether it’s in an Addis neighborhood or in remote Ethiopia). So the staff members have to be heroic. Luckily, they are. We are committed to reaching out to strengthen all our libraries as we can squeeze out resources.

In the US, crucial things like researching book shipments, packing and sorting books, sending out information, helping donors with their fundraising needs, updating the web page, letting people know of needs and opportunities are all done by volunteers who often give hundreds and hundreds of hours. (We have one wonderful ½ staff person in Denver—Emily Pramik–who makes sure checks get deposited and transferred when needed, thank you notes get sent out, and inquiries get answered.) We’re getting better with practice, but if we lapse, let us know. Gently, if possible.

How do I know my library is making a difference?

Think of the readers you know. The ones I know are curious and thoughtful people. They have practice in imagining themselves into the skin of another human being. They are hopeful. They understand life is not without its obstacles and smashing failures, but that these obstacles and failures do not have to have the last word. They dream.

Fiction and nonfiction both shape our hearts and minds in these ways—and we know books and stories, reading and writing, are reaching the next generation in Ethiopia, too.

500% more children in Ethiopia are in school than were just a few years ago. This commitment to education has led to even more crowding of classrooms, even fewer books per pupil. More than ever, we have an unusual opportunity to fill in a crucial gap for some extraordinarily committed, smart, and determined kids. Thanks for being on the team!